I just don't understand the focus on buying studios. You can partner with a studio just fine without having to buy them. Nintendo does this all the time with a lot of success.

Do people know Bandai owns the entire Gundam franchise and runs a lot of stores in Japan? Sony aint buying them.

Even Nintendo has acquired a few studios that they've partnered with. 

Monolith Software was owned by Namco. Nintendo acquired Next Level Games in 2021, SRD in 2022. 

I would say there are a ton of reasons why Sony, Microsoft are having to acquire studios, whereas Nintendo doesn't really have to. 

1.) Nintendo has been consistently fostering development teams for decades. There's a reason why the same people have been at Nintendo for decades. There's a reason why like the top 20 has like 6 Nintendo games. 

2.) Nintendo is also a lot more self sufficient in part due to making games that are less graphically intensive. The Last of Us Part II credits almost 2200 people, and Sony has a handful of games that have around that many people. God of War Ragnarok apparently credits 2600 people. Whereas probably Nintendo's biggest game credits 1150 people, and another 250 with thanks.  And most of Nintendo's games are nowhere near that big. Super Mario Wonder apparently credits 400 people.  

Nintendo is practically able to release a game a month by themselves, whereas for Microsoft and Sony, despite being bigger, struggle to consistently launch that frequently. They have done it, and can do it. Sony has only launched like 4 games this year. Microsoft had a relatively poor 2022. 

Sony and MS have historically been very dependent on third party partners, whereas Nintendo, even though they do partner, they have had massive successes all on their own.

3.) Other companies have been getting interested in the gaming market. Disney, Amazon, Netflix, Google have all been trying in some way or another to get more involved. For Nintendo that really doesn't matter. For Sony and MS, that might mean that they'll lose valuable partners; so there is more push to acquire.

4.) MS and Sony have been pushing a little bit into the subscription business. Nintendo doesn't seem quite as interested in that, but they're dabbling with subscriptions. But you generally need a lot of content to feed those. You could have the option of making the content or making partnerships, but at some point, it becomes more competitive. And the price of a particular piece of content might start to outweigh the cost of making the content yourself. Another big reason why Nintendo doesn't have to acquire in the same way that MS and Sony are getting urged to.

Both times Nintendo acquired a studio in the last 20 years were under special circumstances. Nintendo didn't go shopping.

Sony seems to like to buy studios who they have a close relationship with (mostly). So Arrowhead (Helldivers 2) and Shift Up (Stellar Blade) make the most sense. Larian didn't have any kind of special relationship with Sony when releasing Baldurs Gate 3, PS5 is just what they chose to release (a month later mind you after the PC release) due to issues they were having with Xbox development. Although Larian makes sense from purely a WRPG perspective as Sony themselves have no studios producing them (and MS has been on a spree of buying WRPG developers Inxile, Obsidian, Bethesda, and Blizzard).

As far as Japanese devs, I'm not sure who they could target tbh. I've seen some publishers thrown around like Square Enix and Capcom but if Sony were going to target a publisher I think Konami would make more sense; considering their game development ability is basically nonexistent (and yes, I'm aware of the MGS remaster ports which honestly look like they're going to be hot garbage so even more of a reason Sony should target them as Konami clearly has lost all ability to actually make a video game).

Note: Just because I list a potential target by Sony doesn't mean I WANT Sony to go after them. I'm purely speculating on who Sony COULD go after

I'm surprised 4 pages in and no one has spotted that Shift Up is a Korean studio. I think you'e mixed them up with UltiZero Games, the devs behind Lost Soul Aside, which is indeed a China Hero Project game.

So, I suppose that's another dev you can add to your list! 

I think the discussion surrounding Japan is most interesting. I would've assumed Sony would've tried to publish more JPN games, at least the expansion of Xdev into Asia/ Japan seemed to indicated that would happen. But nothing.

I do wonder if Sony has publishing agreements with Ikumi Nakamura and Hajime Tabata. They both have studios that seem to sync with what Sony wants to pursue.

I think the big issue here is that SIE historically hasn't been looking for franchises, they've typically wanted development ability.

Most of the studios they bought came without IP. There's a few that did come with IP, but Sony hasn't usually used it. The only real exception was Bungie.

They bought Naughty Dog without Crash. They bought Insomniac Games without seemingly intending to use the Sunset Overdrive IP.

I don't think it would be crazy for Sony to acquire Konami for MGS, Castlevania, etc; but it hasn't historically been how they operate.

Larian has already said that they have no interest in being bought out by anybody, so, take it how you will.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/08/baldurs-gate-3-dev-larian-studios-has-no-interest-in-being-acquired